• Apple CEO backs China’s vision of an ‘open’ Internet as censorship reaches new heights (Washington Post, December 2017): Apple’s CEO Tim Cook stood up and celebrated China’s vision of an open Internet. . . “The theme of this conference — developing a digital economy for openness and shared benefits — is a vision we at Apple share,” Cook said, in widely reported remarks. “We are proud to have worked alongside many of our partners in China to help build a community that will join a common future in cyberspace.”

• Apple’s Tim Cook: Internet must have security, humanity (Boston Globe, December 2017): "Cook made the comments at the opening ceremony for China’s World Internet Conference in Wuzhen — an event designed to globally promote the country’s vision of a more censored and controlled internet."

• Inside China’s Big Tech Conference, New Ways to Track Citizens (NYT, December 2017): "The technology enabling a full techno-police state was on hand, giving a glimpse into how new advances in things like artificial intelligence and facial recognition can be used to track citizens — and how they have become widely accepted here."

• Inside China's Vast New Experiment In Social Ranking (Wired, December 2017): "The aim is for every Chinese citizen to be trailed by a file compiling data from public and private sources by 2020, and for those files to be searchable by fingerprints and other biometric characteristics. For the Chinese Communist Party, social credit is an attempt at a softer, more invisible authoritarianism. The goal is to nudge people toward behaviors ranging from energy conservation to obedience to the Party."

• Big data meets Big Brother as China moves to rate its citizens (Wired UK, October 2017), an excerpt from Who Can You Trust? How Technology Brought Us Together and Why It Might Drive Us Apart, by Rachel Botsman. "For now, technically, participating in China's Citizen Scores is voluntary. But by 2020 it will be mandatory. The behaviour of every single citizen and legal person (which includes every company or other entity)in China will be rated and ranked, whether they like it or not."

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Mon. 2/26/18 6:22pm
Mark Hurst:
"China is showing an alternative modernity," Yong Zhao says, to the American and European way. I thought that was an interesting concept

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Mon. 2/26/18 6:22pm
silentkid:
Google does not have access to anything in iCloud -- "Each file is broken into chunks and encrypted by iCloud using AES-128 and a key derived from each chunk’s contents that utilizes SHA-256. The keys and the file’s metadata are stored by Apple in the user’s iCloud account. The encrypted chunks of the file are stored, without any user-identifying information, using third-party storage services, such as S3 and Google Cloud Platform."

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Mon. 2/26/18 6:34pm
northguineahills:
The US and the PRC are as symbiotic as algae and fungi in lichens. We just have very different worldviews and goals.

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Mon. 2/26/18 6:39pm
northguineahills:
Authentic Chinese food is tastey???? Shut up and take my money (miss Chinatown, but there is a few authentic Chinese restaurants here (not to be confused w/ Chinese-American cuisine)

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Mon. 2/26/18 6:39pm
Folsom:
The WSJ article about face recognition is similar to the BBC reporter getting ID'd in 7 minutes after he let the authorities scan his face. www.bbc.com...

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Mon. 2/26/18 6:52pm
Tommy in Neversink:
There are a few major languages in China such as Mandarin , Cantonese, Fucanese . So it's probably better to say I speak one of these languages rather than say I speak Chinese

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Mon. 2/26/18 6:53pm
RomanDogBird:
i get very psyched for the marathon every year

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Mon. 2/26/18 6:54pm
TDK60:
Of course, Mark...I should have said "state capitalist," as in the old USSR. Plus, in the West "free market" capitalism is more and more state integrated. Just my 2 cents. And I admit not knowing much specifics about China's economy.

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Mon. 2/26/18 6:55pm
βrian:
My wife, who teaches quite a few young Chinese students, mentions that they are *horrified* that they can't have food delivered to their dorm room door in mere minutes, via phone.

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Mon. 2/26/18 6:56pm
Jeff Moore:
A number of times in recent years I've referred to a building a few blocks from the station as an office of "the Communist Chinese investment bank", and waited for people to react to the apparent absurdity of those words together.

They never seem to react, they've just either accepted the wacky-to-me current reality - or they don't listen that closely to, well, words.